Chapter 82
SOPHIE
I pushed through Hamilton’s front door with my hip, holding the plate steady. I’d baked shortbread cookies again. Keeping things simple after my whole “she killed him with ice cubes and bocce!” fiasco. That made theatrical sense, but maybe I’d leave the actual clues to Lily-Ann.
I stepped inside and glanced at the banner Miles painted, with HAPPY PARTY MRS. B!
in huge letters and a dozen stick figures prancing around colorful marigolds.
At least three of the figures were Mrs. B, with white hair and bracelets, which I thought really captured her ubiquity.
The drawing of Anthony looked like the Michelin Tire Man, while I looked like a stick figure in a skirt with a ponytail.
At least I’d gotten off easier than Nicholas, who was the most default stick man possible: five lines and a circle, which made me laugh.
Poor Nicholas. For some reason Lily-Ann’s stick figure was the only one with eyelashes, and Hamilton’s was wrapped in a flowery shirt.
I smiled to Ocean and Mrs. B, who were bickering about the best way to unwrap a present. Having a grand old time. Those two really enjoyed a good bicker.
As I brought the plate to the table, Lily-Ann called, “Close the front door.”
“Hm?” Nicholas asked, entering behind me with an armload of drinks.
“We need to talk before CJ gets here.” Lily-Ann’s sharp gaze swept across the room. “And agree not to tell the whole truth.”
I glanced at Ocean, but she was focusing on fiddling with the presents so I couldn’t see her face. According to Riley, she’d tried to talk to CJ in the hospital, and again after she returned home. Unsuccessfully, both times.
“She deserves to know,” Mrs. B said.
“Does deserving matter?” Lily-Ann asked.
“She won’t say anything to the police,” Nicholas assured her, setting the drinks down. “She can’t.”
“Telling her the truth is your birthday gift to me,” Mrs. B told Lily-Ann, in a wheedling voice. “Please?”
“It’s not your birthday,” Ocean said, setting a present aside.
“CJ doesn’t know that. She’s still weak and uncertain. She needs a party, but she refused to let me throw a welcome-home-from-the-hospital bash, so here we are.”
“She said she’s not ready.”
“Bah,” Mrs. B said. “Readiness is overrated. And just because she’s not ready to talk to you, Ocean, doesn’t mean she’s not—”
“Telling her is a bad idea,” Lily-Ann interrupted.
Mrs. B sniffed. “Of course you think you know best.”
“That is correct.”
Hamilton interrupted by offering everyone his homemade fruit leather, in strawberry, strawberry-zucchini, and spicy strawberry-zucchini.
He was explaining that he used a mix of habanero and jalapeno when a knock sounded and CJ stepped inside.
She still looked wan, but she was getting better every day—and I was happy to see she’d recovered enough to do her full eye makeup for the pretend birthday party.
After Mrs. B kissed everyone, we settled in for a feast: mounds of rice and mapo tofu and spicy green beans and orange chicken and plates of dumplings and spring rolls. We chatted about everything except murder … until CJ dinged her glass with a chopstick.
“I don’t want to make the birthday all about me,” she said, after Hamilton stopped talking about how the word should actually be reredundant, “but I need to thank you all again.”
“I wouldn’t worry about the birthday,” Nicholas murmured.
“I can’t even express how grateful I am,” CJ continued. “I’m just so … grateful. Uh, maybe you’ll understand how I feel if I say the word ‘grateful’ another ten times.”
I laughed. “We’re just happy you’re back.”
“Well, about that. That’s the other thing.” She glanced at Ocean and then away. “I, um, hate how much trouble I’ve been. To you all. How needy, I guess. So I’m leaving Santa Barbara for a while. I need a fresh start.”
“I adore fresh starts!” Mrs. B told her. “They’re my second-favorite kind of start. But I hope you’re not leaving because you’re afraid we’ll learn your secret.”
CJ blinked at her. “My secret?”
“Oh, yes. We know all about that.” Mrs. B peered across the table. “Lily-Ann?”
Lily-Ann set her napkin aside. “Frank DeYoung wanted to die. That is established. He told you that, he told you everything—except that he’d hired Pax. Which he didn’t mention because he didn’t want to make you an accessory.”
“Is that why he didn’t tell me?” CJ asked faintly. “That’s so Frank.”
“He loved you like a daughter, and you loved him. You couldn’t stand seeing him in pain.”
“He was so unhappy.” She twisted her napkin in her hands. “He kept telling me that he was one lucky slip in the shower from painlessness and peace.”
“You wanted to help him end things quickly. However, unlike Frank, you had no plan. You simply saw him standing on the landing after the party—and you pushed him.”
“I pushed him?” CJ’s teary gaze flickered to Ocean, then back to Lily-Ann. “But you convinced that cop that he fell.”
“Enible is cannier than he looks, CJ,” Ocean said, her voice brusque but her eyes gentle. “I don’t know if we convinced him so much as gave him an acceptable alternative.”
“Still,” I said, “you did push him.”
CJ wiped tears from her face. “When I heard that liquor bottle shatter, it was like a starting gun. It startled me into action. He wanted to die, but Karina wouldn’t let him so…
” She took a hiccupping breath. “So he suffered instead. I couldn’t take it anymore.
I didn’t know he’d hired Pax. I didn’t know anything. ”
“You knew what he wanted,” Nicholas told her.
She didn’t seem to hear him. “All I know is that I deserve what Pax did to me. For what I did. I don’t deserve happiness and freedom and—and friendship. Not after what I did. I deserve worse than I got, worse than what Pax—”
“No,” I said. “You absolutely do not.”
“Can you explain the supposed suicide note?” Lily-Ann asked, which was interesting because she hadn’t told anyone else about the note until after Pax died.
CJ shuddered. “Pax called me. He said we needed to meet about Frank. About what Frank would’ve wanted. He brought me to the music studio and gave me a drink and … I guess he’d gone through my journal when he was feeding the birds and tore out a section that looked bad.”
“And the search on the laptop?” Lily-Ann asked.
“That was me. I forgot I’d done that. I only—I wasn’t serious, not at first. Oh, god.” Her shuddering grew more pronounced. “I never meant this to happen, I only ever wanted what Frank wanted.”
Mrs. B chirped, “Well, I’m thrilled we proved your innocence!”
“I’m not sure that’s what we proved,” Hamilton told her.
She waved his words away. “Oh, pish! She was just trying to help. She did help! That poor man. At least, I know Ocean will carry me the last few steps, when the time comes.”
“When the time comes?” Ocean said. “I’m ready right now.”
Mrs. B cackled. “I’m not ready yet, you horrible child! I only wish we’d stopped Pax before he hurt Sunny Wheeler.”
“I mean, Wheeler did illegally buy plasma from college kids,” Nicholas said.
“True, but I’m not sure he deserved—”
The front door banged open before she finished, and Ocean’s kids burst inside. Miles swept his hand grandly toward his sister and said, “Introducing the newest member of the family! The one, the only…”
Riley revealed a white kitten in her arms. “Mr. Betty!”
“We’re changing his name to Mr. Marigold,” Miles declared.
“We are not,” Riley said.
Ocean laughed. “Maybe we should let Hamilton name his own cat?”
“He’s not just his,” Miles insisted. “He’s all of ours.”
Hamilton gazed at the cat, his eyes misty with delight. For the first time since I’d met him, he didn’t seem to know what to say. He looked for a long moment at the cat, then he looked around his crowded living room and blinked a few times and whispered, “He’s perfect.”
“He came with regards from Helene and George,” Nicholas told him.
“We could call him Beluga,” Miles said, peering at Anthony. “Like the whale.”
“Or Moby ’cause he’s white!” Riley said.
“Not Montevideo?” Anthony asked.
Everyone started suggesting names, though to my surprise Mrs. B didn’t say anything. She simply watched, a happy glimmer in her warm brown eyes.
So I asked, “What do you think, Mrs. B?”
“I think Miles is right,” she said. “He’s not just Hamilton’s, he’s all of ours. We all belong to all of us.”
And that was the end of that.
Except not really.
I LEFT WORK early again, though this time with a spring in my step.
I’d signed my very first Platinum Patron donor, which covered the cost of an entire production, from set design to bathroom soap.
And I’d officially earned the theatre ten times my salary, which felt pretty good.
I reported my triumph to the Givemore Girls as I walked home, then made self-deprecatory comments as I strolled along.
When I reached the courtyard, I paused to study my old cottage. It looked lonely now, with CJ gone.
Poor Ocean. She was taking CJ’s departure as a personal romantic failure, even though Riley had reported that CJ left her with a long handwritten letter and a big bouquet of flowers.
So naturally we were all rallying around Ocean.
Well, Lily-Ann and I had taken her out a few times, Anthony brought six-packs to her studio, Nicholas talked to her about galleries in LA, Hamilton shared kitty videos, and Mrs. B cornered Detective Enible to ask if “that adorable policewoman” was perhaps single.
As I stood there, a breeze wafted across the property, bringing the sound of Miles chattering at Anthony and the whine of Ocean grinding marble behind her cottage.
For a moment, the courtyard felt like a stage to me, with all these wonderful characters waiting in the wings.
I smiled and thought about the new play I was working on, very loosely based on the death of Frank DeYoung.
I was making Helene and George the villains—because they’d insisted.
George even demanded that I switch his beard for what he called “a glossy and luxuriant” mustache.
However, in real life, villains were a little harder to identify. And I found myself mentally drafting scenes that would never see the light of day:
ACT III
SCENE IV
Curtain opens on the same lovely deck overlooking the same shimmering ocean. Lily-Ann, Ocean, Mrs. B, Sophie, Nicholas, Pax, and Karina are frozen in place until …
PAX
(to Karina)
Frank had nothing to live for.
KARINA
(springing to her feet)
He had me!
(Karina shoves Pax, who stumbles backward. Ocean grabs for Pax but he windmills his arms, then tumbles backward offstage, to the sound of slamming, crashing, and a fatal crack. Ocean follows him offstage.)
KARINA
Oh, no, oh, god!
LILY-ANN
An ambulance is already on the way.
OCEAN
(from offstage)
Too late for Pax. I really need to stop finding dead bodies.
KARINA
I killed him. I killed him.
MRS. B
Yes, dear. On the other hand—not to say the bright side—he did murder your old friend.
LILY-ANN
That won’t impress the police.
MRS. B
Surely, they’ll understand! We all make mistakes.
KARINA
I didn’t mean to! It was an accident! I just shoved him and I … I’m going to be sick.
(A siren sounds in the distance, warbling closer.)
MRS. B
Oh my shit, as the kids say. Lily-Ann, think of something!
LILY-ANN
Yes. Well, we all witnessed Karina push Pax down the stairs to his death. After blaming CJ for doing the same to Frank.
KARINA
Because she did! I saw her!
LILY-ANN
Still, I’m not sure Karina deserves to spend the rest of her life locked in a cell.
Alone, suffering, forgotten. So let’s agree that she merely stood abruptly and shouted a few intemperate words.
Pax took a step backward and fell accidentally.
Karina didn’t touch him. If we say that’s what happened, then—
KARINA
Would you? Please, I never—I didn’t mean … When I heard Frank went behind my back, to, to escape me, to—
LILY-ANN
We will need compensation.
(Karina reacts in shock—as does everyone else, though Lily-Ann remains unruffled.)
We’ll forget how Pax fell if you reinstate Frank’s charitable donations.
KARINA
His donations?
LILY-ANN
All of them, yes.
SOPHIE
Plus, a one-time twenty-million-dollar gift to World of Goods!
MRS. B
What a lovely way to honor your husband’s memory. Such a wonderful memorial.
(The sirens get louder, louder—red lights flash from offstage.)
KARINA
T-twenty million to World of Goods?
LILY-ANN
And reinstate Frank’s donations for the rest of your life—which you’ll spend on an ostentatious Italian yacht instead of locked in a cell.
(The static of police radios sounds offstage.)
MRS. B
Oh, good! I knew we’d figure this out if we put our heads together.
OF COURSE I knew that covering up another murder wasn’t exactly ethical. Still, I felt a warm glow of satisfaction at the money I’d raised for World of Goods. Well, the money I’d extorted. That donation would save thousands of lives—tens of thousands. Though I guess I’d leave it off my résumé.
When a meow sounded at my feet, I knelt to scratch Mr. Betty behind the ear, and noticed the camera on his collar. Typical Hamilton.
I tilted the lens toward me and made a funny face.
As I straightened, I caught sight of Ocean’s latest painting propped against Mrs. B’s cottage.
At first glance, it looked like an almost tropical bush, with lush leaves covering the entire surface.
Yet if I looked longer, I felt a glow of happiness in my chest. I didn’t know why.
It didn’t make sense. Still, the painting never failed to make me smile.
Something about that swath of berries and leaves felt … joyful. Hopeful. Like Hamilton’s expression whenever he offered Anthony a strange beverage, or like Mrs. B’s when she gazed at Ocean. Like the way Lily-Ann leaned into Anthony when she thought nobody was looking.
Like how I felt now, heading home to Nicholas. Leaving my old cottage behind. Empty again, until Mrs. B found another lost soul who needed our help.